Am I suggesting your drag your scale everywhere with you and weigh and measure all your foods for the rest of your life?

No!

But I think weighing your food daily for as little as two weeks is a great way to familiarize yourself with appropriate portion sizes.

Think you know what 3 oz looks like? Are you sure? Using a scale leaves no room for error!

Should you whip out your scale at a restaurant? Of course not...

...but using it at home will help you better judge portions when you aredining out.

After a couple of weeks you'll be better at eyeballing your portions. However...

...our eyes tend to grow...

...and over time that bowl of cereal gets filled just a little bit more, your serving of chicken gets just slightly bigger...

...and before you know it, you're back to the old portion sizes again.

It's not a bad idea to plan to use a food scale 1 week per month in order to reign in portions before they have a chance to get out of control again.

Food scales have come a long way

Of course you can find the basic ones that simply weigh your food.

You can also find nutritional scales that tell you how many calories, protein, carbs, total sugars, total fat, fiber, sodium, cholesterol, etc. are in the food you're weighing. Regulate calories, nutrients and portion size!